B For Beelzebub

The Boston Bruins are so desperate for scoring they signed a deal with The Devil.

Alright, alright. That’s the last demonic play on words I’m going to do with Miroslav Satan’s name. They’ve sure as hell all been done before a million times in all the different cities he’s played in. I’ll be damned if I’m going to continue such an obvious sort of trend here so I’m going to stop right there.

Swear to God.

It sure was odd seeing him in Black and Gold last night in Ottawa where the B’s, hot off the heels of a lackluster loss in New York and the scathing reprimands from Claude Julien that followed, handed the Senators their lunch in the first period and never looked back.

Wears that No. 81 pretty well, doesn’t he? He looked a bit rusty, sure, but managed to skate pretty well and get in the mix at right wing on what could become an excellent line, centered by David Krejci (goal and assist last night) with Blake Wheeler (two goals and assist) at left wing. The trio all finished at +2 for the game and were a going concern all night.

Certainly he could fill the spot better than Michael Ryder has there this season. Which begs the question: What is wrong with him? I’ve repeatedly mentioned the fact that he has very seldom been a real factor in too many games this season and, at times, has been a void of total emptiness for a team in desperate need of some goalscoring from the wing. He’s been utterly unable to find any chemistry with Marc Savard and that which he once had wth Krejci and Wheeler seems to have dissipated. With 10-7-17 totals through 42 games his projected output is dangerously near the pathetic career lows he produced in his final year in Montreal in 2007-08.

Not good enough. Not at all.

A quick glance at the career scoring totals for Ryder versus Satan in the NHL through last season.

Alright, so it’s been two years since Satan put up any real numbers worth mentioning, so perhaps it’s foolish to think he can be any sort of answer for the team’s scoring woes. Then again, he only costs the team about $700,000 versus the sort of funk that Ryder is in at about $4 Million, which is a lot harder to swallow. Satan is 35 and Ryder is 29.

So why do I think Satan will out-perform him, then? I don’t really have a solid answer for that other than Satan has a better track record as a bona fide sniper in the NHL and the spottiness of Ryder’s is now official.

Time to give The Devil his due.

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This entry was posted on January 6, 2010 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Boston Bruins, NHL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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